Syrian violence contributed to a sharp rise in
the number of journalists killed for their work in 2012, as did a series of
murders in Somalia. The dead include a record proportion of journalists who
worked online. A CPJ special report

Syria and Libya were
the main themes at the 19th edition of the Bayeux-Calvados Prize for
War Correspondents, which took place this weekend in the historical city of
Bayeux, a few miles away from the Normandy beaches where Allied forces landed
in June 1944 to liberate Europe from the Nazi yoke.

A report on the first anniversary of the Syrian uprising

Weeks of sporadic protests seeking government reform burst into
full-fledged unrest on March 15, 2011, when thousands of demonstrators gathered
in four Syrian cities. Within days, authorities had cut off news media access
to Daraa, a center of the unrest, beginning a sustained effort to shut down international
news coverage of the uprising and the government's increasingly violent
crackdown. As the civilian death toll has reached well into the thousands,
according to U.N. figures, the last four months have taken a particularly dark
turn for the press. Eight
local and international journalists have been killed on duty since November, at
least five in circumstances that raise questions about government culpability. Yet
one year after the Syrian uprising began, killing the messenger has not
silenced the message.

Not since the worst period of the Iraq war, or in the
Balkans the decade before, have so many storied journalists been killed or seriously
injured in such a short period of time. Inevitably, the spate of deaths leaves
many journalists asking questions about whether and how much they are willing
to risk their own lives, and possibly the lives of others. Many experienced
journalists might agree on one thing: the decisions one makes about risk are
among the most intimate decisions they will ever make.

The killing
on January 11 of a French TV reporter has sent a chill through the
international press corps trying to cover the violence in Syria. Gilles Jacquier,
43, who was on assignment for the French public service channel France
2, was a seasoned journalist and the laureate of France's most prestigious journalism
prizes. As a special reporter for "Envoyé special," France's equivalent of "60 Minutes," he had covered dozens of wars, from Kosovo to Afghanistan, and was
considered one of the most professional French war correspondents.

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New York, January 11, 2012--French TV journalist Gilles Jacquier was
killed on Wednesday in the Syrian city of Homs, according to news
reports. Jacquier is the first foreignjournalist killed in Syria since the 10-month uprising began.